


Code Orange

by Sholio



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Family Feels, Festivals, Gen, Halloween, M/M, Pumpkins, Small Towns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-23 10:31:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20890661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: "David! Do you even remember what a Code Orange is?""Something to do with Mom and Dad, well, Mom mostly, planning some kind of embarrassing publicity stunt for Halloween, wasn't it?"





	Code Orange

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gloss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/gifts).

"We have a Code Orange," Alexis declared, bursting into the motel room.

"Go away, I'm giving myself a pedicure."

"With _my_ nail file! Ewww, David!" She tried to grab for it; David promptly sat on it. "David! Do you even remember what a Code Orange is?"

"Something to do with Mom and Dad, well, Mom mostly, planning some kind of embarrassing publicity stunt for Halloween, wasn't it? They haven't done that since we were kids, though. In fact, I think it was the time you ate two bags of candy corn and got sick on the hay ride that did away with the Rose family Halloween excursion and photo op. It was definitely a Code Orange that year -- ow -- no -- not the Tom Ford cashmere, _get off!"_

Alexis rolled off the bed, having retrieved her nail file, and promptly dropped it in the trash. "Since you're too busy abusing my vital beauty supplies to ask, I'll just tell you. There are _pumpkins_ in the motel lobby."

"Oh no, how will we live."

"And on the sidewalk. And an enormous pile of them in the back of the mayor's truck. There's something going _on,_ David, and it smells like Code Orange."

"What does that smell like, anyway? Like pumpkin? Like candy corn on a hay ride?"

"_Ewww,_ David!"

*

"A town pumpkin carving contest," David said. He hated it when Alexis was right.

"It's a Schitt's Creek tradition," Patrick said cheerfully, stringing a chain of tiny pumpkins across the window of the store, which David, following after him, promptly took down.

"We talked about this. Didn't we talk about this? Halloween decorations are entirely the wrong image for the store."

"Au contraire. Customers _love_ Halloween decor. Halloween decor says 'Come on in, we love the season and we're having a sale on pumpkin scented face masks'."

"First of all," David said, fruitlessly trying to remove a plastic cobweb from the lip balm display, "that is a _lot_ of eloquence to ascribe to a bunch of tacky plastic crap from Tar-zhay --"

"I keep telling you it's pronounced Target --"

"-- and second, if we _must_ entice customers with a shameless appeal to a holiday invented by marketing executives to sell candy and made-in-China Halloween costumes, the very least we could do is _at least_ deploy some decorations that indicate we have some semblance of actual taste. A few minimalist black streamers around the door wouldn't look too awful ... and I do still have that stuffed raven from the Blouse Barn."

"Wait a minute, was that the incredibly sexy sound of a compromise I just heard?"

"Oh stop," David said, but he couldn't help grinning, especially when Patrick's arm slid around his waist, and only surfaced a few kisses later to manage to say, "Wait, no, returning to an earlier but potentially alarming topic, what exactly does this Schitt's Creek tradition entail?"

*

"It's just the pumpkin festival," Stevie said. "Goes all the way back to the early 1900s, a few years before Heironymous Schitt set himself on fire in a freak whiskey-still accident in '23, or was it '25 -- wait, did Patrick seriously refuse to tell you?"

"He said I was probably better off not knowing. He also looked like he was trying not to laugh. So I figured I'd ask you, because your family has lived here since basically the Stone Age."

"Wow," Stevie said, and she gave the motel desk a kick, doing a complete spin in her office chair before coming back to a resting position. "I owe Patrick a pumpkin between the eyes at the pumpkin fling."

"... and that's exactly what I'm talking about. _What_ pumpkin fling? What is the Pumpkin Festival and why will no one tell me?"

"You'll find out soon enough," Stevie said, "because from what I've heard, your mother is in charge of it."

"Code Orange," David said, and dropped his head onto his arms.

"What does that mean?"

"Make you a deal," he moaned without raising his head. "You tell me about the pumpkin festival, I'll tell you about Code Orange, and we will never speak of this again."

"Mmmm ... fair. All right, it started when Ernestine Schitt was going to be burned at the stake --"

"Stop right there." David roused himself from his existential despair coma enough to raise a hand. "I might have flunked US history twice because I was too busy staring at Jeremy Hatchmeyer's calves -- he played soccer, it wasn't my fault, and it was even less my fault when he was held back a grade and we had to repeat it together because he was as dumb as a prematurely pubescent sack of soccer cleats, but ... what were we talking about?"

"Witch burning."

"Never happened," David said firmly. "It's an urban legend, like the hook-hand man and the Lincoln assassination."

"I ... okay, wow, so first of all I think you should look up US history on Wikipedia one of these days, but anyway, do you want me to tell this story or not?"

"Sorry. Please do go on with your completely true and not at all made up story."

*

"Mother," David said, marching into his parents' room at the motel.

Moira glanced up from wig-arranging. "_Knock_ before you come in, dear, were you raised in a _barn_? You could have surprised your father and myself _in flagrante delicto."_

"Oh ... God, thank you so much for _that_ incredibly scarring thought, and now I've lost my train of thought completely --" His gaze fell on a pumpkin on the table. "... no wait, there it is. Mother, when you agreed to chair the committee for this town's pumpkin festival, did you ever actually ask anyone what the Schitt's Creek Pumpkin Festival involves?"

"Well ... pumpkins, darling, obviously."

"Other than that."

"Pumpkins," Moira said.

"You said that one already."

"Well -- I can't be expected to keep all the details straight; that's why other people exist to be delegated to."

"Did anyone mention the orgies in the woods? The demonic possession ceremony at midnight? The ... use of trained black cats to spell out the town name ... you know," David said slowly, "I'm starting to think -- she might possibly have been less than entirely truthful with -- I _knew_ she was lying, I knew it from the beginning. STEVIE!"

"Close the door on your way out, David -- oh, if you see your father around the lobby, could you tell him he needs to come in here and help Mummy move some pumpkins?"

"Mother!!"

"That wasn't a euphemism!" she called after him.

*

"David," Alexis said, giving the leaves on the motel lawn a few desultory pokes with her rake, "I feel as if you deserve everything you get if you ask Stevie Budd a question like that and then go ahead and believe the answer."

"It's Patrick's fault for not telling me. I had to go to Stevie; I had no choice." David looked from his leaf pile to hers. "Mine's bigger than yours, by the way."

"First of all, _ewwww."_ She poked at him with her rake; David, grinning, ducked away. "And for the record, I don't know why _we're_ having to do this. Isn't this literally what Roland is paid for?"

"He's hauling pumpkins. I guess."

"My skin can't take manual labor," Alexis moaned.

"You've moved three leaves so far. I think your skin can handle it." David unfolded his hand off the rake handle. "Oh my God, is that a blister?"

"At least I can reassure myself that your skin is softer than mine." She frowned. "That doesn't sound like a compliment to me. I retract it."

"Too late, no take-backsies." He kicked leaves at her. 

Alexis shrieked and batted at him with the rake, and they were in the middle of a heated leaf rake duel when Patrick's voice called across the lawn, "Hi there, Roses."

David involuntarily dropped his rake and nearly got Alexis's rake in the face. He tried to remind himself, as Patrick wandered over from the motel parking lot, that he was too annoyed with Patrick to be even slightly affected by the rolled-up sleeves of Patrick's blue work shirt and the way Patrick was grinning at him. It didn't work, especially when Patrick looked him up and down and said, "Nothing sexier than a man who works with his hands."

"You liar," David said, struggling ineffectually to keep the grin off his face. "You are on notice. Notice!"

Patrick gave Alexis a questioning look.

"David asked Stevie about the pumpkin festival," Alexis said. "It went about like you'd expect."

Patrick turned the raised-eyebrow look on David, where it developed overtones of deeply fond amusement. "Told you the witch story, did she?"

"Did you plan this?" David's voice rose on a note of quivering betrayal.

"No, no, no." Patrick smoothed a hand down David's arm. David refused to be placated, though wow, it was a very _nice_ hand-smoothing. "Though," Patrick added, "I have to say it's a nice fringe benefit ..." and something autumn-related snapped in the back of David's mind.

"Alexis," David said, "your help, please. I think pushing people into piles of leaves is a thing you can do, right? In rural places in the autumn? I need to find a pile of leaves and push Patrick into it."

"Oh, boy," Alexis crowed, and grabbed one of Patrick's arms. "Sorry, Patrick, it's my sisterly duty to help out here. David -- _no,_ David, _push._ How can you be so bad at this?"

Eventually Patrick allowed himself to be strong-armed into the pile of leaves that David had just raked, painstakingly and at great cost to his manicure. David toppled on top of him; leaves went everywhere, and Alexis dropped the rake on them both. "Oh gosh, I think it's breaktime," she said, and scampered off.

David found himself half buried in leaves with Patrick's arms around him. "Work out like you'd hoped?" said Patrick's voice in his ear.

"There's a -- pfeh! -- leaf in my mouth."

"That's what happens when you bury people in leaves," and Patrick's breath ghosted across his ear, followed by a light, teasing tug of teeth at his earlobe.

"We're on the motel lawn, you animal."

"We're buried in leaves," Patrick pointed out.

"Huh ... okay, point," and David gave in to the urge to press his face and lips into the teasing bit of neck and collarbone that was unfairly _right there._

(He had leaves down his collar afterwards and had completely ruined his favorite cashmere, but he didn't actually mind all that much.)

*

"Wow," Stevie said, holding up the flyer. She turned it sideways and studied the grainy black-and-white printout of a jack-o-lantern with half the face cut off. "SchittyPumpkinFest.com. That is ... one hell of a URL, all right."

David halfheartedly added another stack of flyers from the motel office copy machine to the growing pile. "Dad, why didn't you just ask me to register the website for you? I can't believe you delegated it to Roland Schitt of all people."

"I did ask you, David. I asked you on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, and on Thursday, and Halloween was two days away, and I ... I don't know, I panicked! So sue me!"

"At least you're the one who gets to explain this to Mom."

*

The banner hanging above Main Street read, in huge letters, PUMPKIN FEEST!!, so David had no doubt that some subset of Schitts had been involved with that as well. 

"It's the traditional town banner, as you might be able to guess," Stevie said. She'd been hanging around Rose Apothecary for most of the afternoon, hiding in the storeroom whenever one of David's parents passed by. David could relate to the sentiment; he _might_ have found a number of necessary things to do in the storeroom that afternoon as well. "They've been putting it up for, oh, at least a couple of decades. Definitely ever since I was a kid."

"So no one in this town can spell, is what you're saying." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Patrick stifle a grin.

Stevie, who was sitting on the edge of the display table despite all David's efforts to dislodge her, leaned to point out the window. "If you just look to the side there -- no, a little further -- you can see where mice ate part of the 'T' while it was stored in Mutt's barn."

"Hello, hardworking salt of the earth people!" Alexis declared, breezing through the door. "... and David. You coward," she hissed at him. "I'm here to bring you a plate of Mrs. Schitt's pumpkin bars and also to hide from Mom for a while. Here, take one." She thrust out the tray balanced on both hands, and glanced nervously over her shoulder. "If you see Mom outside the window, I need you all to look like you're asking me questions about pumpkin bars that look like they're going to require a long explanation."

"It's just about time for the festivities, isn't it?" Patrick said, laying down the account book that he'd been working on while David worked equally hard making minute-but-important adjustments to the pumpkin lotion display.

"Nooooo," Alexis moaned. "I only just _escaped."_

"Everyone's got their costumes, right?" Patrick asked brightly.

David had a feeling that Alexis's look of sheer horror was matched or exceeded by his own. "No one said," he said very carefully, "that costumes were involved."

"Oh yes. Anyone who shows up at the Pumpkin Festival without a costume," Stevie said, perfectly straight-faced, "becomes the Halloween Fool and is paraded around the town on a float made out of corncobs."

"I ... think this is a joke," Alexis said carefully.

"This is a joke, right? She's joking, right?" David appealed to Patrick.

There was a moment of solemn silence before Patrick met Stevie's eyes and they both cracked up.

"In my defense, in this town, this is plausible," David said, and Alexis nodded.

Patrick grinned. He slid the account book under the desk and got up. "You can wear a costume if you want to. You could be a cute little ghost."

"No. Stop it."

Patrick laughed.

"Did you guys go trick-or-treating in one-percenter-land?" Stevie wanted to know.

"Of course we did." David made a face. "Mostly to the houses of all our parents' friends, most of whom didn't have kids. Or know anything about kids."

"We got a lot of those cute little ..." Alexis shifted the tray to the crook of her arm to demonstrate with her fingers, "-- teeny tiny bottles of booze."

"Which Mom always confiscated."

"And drank. Actually, I think Mom liked Halloween more than we did."

"That weird little package that one time was totally cocaine, right?"

"Mmm. Yeah. Probably."

"Aren't you glad you asked?" David said to Stevie.

She swung her head in a slow shake. "No. No, I am not glad. Thanks for that."

Patrick hooked his arm through David's, resting his chin on David's shoulder. "We can trick or treat if you want," he said quietly, and it wasn't actually teasing this time; it was solemn and sincere. David had a sudden horrifying suspicion that if he said he did in fact want to make up for lost childhood time, Patrick would find a sheet to make a ghost costume out of and drag him to every house in Schitt's Creek, and look like he was having fun the whole time.

"Not a chance. Do you know how hard I've worked to keep my teeth this perfect?" he said, and Patrick turned his cheek against David's shoulder, and smiled into his sweater.

Stevie cleared her throat and hopped off the display table. "Pumpkins wait for no one, you know. How many of you entered the jack-o-lantern contest?"

"You mean that's a real thing?" David said.

"Of course it's a real thing. Why would I make up something like that?" she asked, straight-faced again.

"I hate you," David said, aware of Patrick snickering against his shoulder.

"Oh gosh," Alexis said, putting the tray hastily down on top of an all-natural toothpaste display. "I just remembered I'm supposed to help Ted with the petting zoo. Daviiiid! Come pet puppies!"

"I don't want to pet puppies," David complained, as he was chivvied out the door by Patrick on one side and Stevie on the other. "Abduction! Kidnapping! Help!"

*

David was never, ever going to admit it, especially to Stevie, but the pumpkin festival was actually stupidly fun.

Stevie's pumpkin, with a knife through its forehead, won third place in the appallingly sad pumpkin carving contest, but Stevie seemed to be delighted (well, as delighted as Stevie ever got) with her ribbon, so David managed to refrain, mostly, from peanut gallery comments. There was food everywhere, apple bobbing (which Patrick convinced him to try; there went another sweater), kids running around in homemade costumes, and a bonfire on the town square which ... uh ...

"Tell me that's not a person in there," David said.

"It's just Heironymous Schitt," Stevie declared, popping up at his shoulder. "Or his effigy. I told you about him, right?"

"You also said your town used to burn people at the stake!"

"... okay, I admit that was a bald-faced lie, but good ol' Heironymous really did set himself on fire with his moonshine still in the hallowed year of '25 -- or 26, whatever it was, so anyway, there's a bonfire in his honor every year."

David stared at her, straining for any signs of a lie, but she really did seem to be serious, and also, that really did look an awful lot like a flaming scarecrow with a large coil of tubing going from its hand to a flaming whiskey barrel on the town green.

"We arrived just in time for the ceremonial torching," Stevie added. "That's supposed to be good luck. Keeps the demon possessions at bay for another year."

David squinted suspiciously at her. She smiled cheerily, patted the ribbon taped to her shoulder, and wandered off into the crowd.

"You can see why I wanted to protect you from this," Patrick said, squeezing him with a warm arm around his shoulders.

"I really don't think leaving me to be educated by Stevie Budd constitutes protecting me."

".... Okay. Point."

So that happened. But later, as the night wore on toward midnight and the children began to thin out, David happened on Alexis sitting on a park bench by the coals of the flaming bootlegger. A coil of half-melted tubing was still visible in the ashes.

"Threat level orange," David murmured as he sat down beside her, and Alexis rolled her eyes and bopped him on the shoulder, then held out a small basket.

"Chocolate?"

The basket was shaped like a pumpkin. "Is this -- wait --" David plunged a hand in and came up with a fistful of mini chocolate bars. "Did you go _trick or treating?"_

"Ted took me," Alexis said cheerily. 

"Did you wear costumes? Tell me you wore costumes. Did he dress up like a Transformer?"

"No, _David._ We took puppies. We said people could pet the puppies for one minute if they gave us candy, and almost everyone did. Two minutes for full-sized chocolate bars, but Ted took most of those to give to the kids at the underprivileged children's home he volunteers at, or ... okay, I wasn't listening to the details, but anyway, it's mostly the small ones left."

"That's such an odd mix of adorable and mercenary." David chose a mini Snickers bar and unwrapped it. Sure, it was terrible for the teeth and murder on the waistline. But tonight felt special somehow.

"Ted asked if you might want to come, but I said I'd collect for both of us, because otherwise you would probably die of embarrassment."

"You're not wrong."

"So half of this is yours." She shook the basket at him. He took another candy bar.

After a little while, Alexis pulled up her legs on the park bench and rested her head on his shoulder, snuggled up against him like she sometimes used to do when they were kids.

"This has been a pretty nice little stupid small-town pumpkin festival, don't you think?" she said.

"In my extensive experience with small-town pumpkin festivals," David said, and Alexis giggled. He grinned down at her hair.

"I guess it turns out," Alexis said thoughtfully, "that the secret to not letting a Code Orange ruin your life, or at least the part of your life from third to ninth grade, is doing some of the planning yourself."

"Or maybe they have a better class of pumpkins here."

She giggled and curled up against him on the bench, and dug another mini chocolate bar out of the basket balanced between their thighs. "Yeah. For sure. It's probably that."


End file.
